THE SMALL COIN OF LOVE.
By James Buckham
A LADY stepped into an elevator in a tall office building, and as she did so said pleasantly to the colored elevator boy, "Good morning." The boy looked up with pleased and grateful surprise, then replied, "Dat is de fust time anybody ever said, 'Good mornin',' to me here." Ah, how we shrink from paying out the small coin of love! How we hoard the mills and cents of goodwill, like veritable heart misers! How often do we hear a kind word spoken, or see a kind act performed, as people brush up against each other in the intercourse of daily life? And yet many of these people are making large donations of love and life to others, toiling, self-sacrificing, self-denying, that others may be happier and better. Surely it is not because their hearts are selfish or unloving that they are so chary of those little words and acts of kindness and sympathy that come like sunshine to lonely, longing souls. It is simply because they underestimate the value of the small coin of love. They do not think it worth the trouble of paying out. Their minds are fixed upon the ministry of large and lavish giving, and so they utterly overlook the blessedness of the smaller giving. The truly Christlike Christian will keep in circulation the small coin of love as well as the great. For to him the cent of the kind word bears as truly the image and superscription of the great King as the gold coin of the larger gift and the costlier sacrifice. He will not neglect to give the smile and the, "Good morning," because his heart is full of benevolent zeal for his church, or his family, or any noble cause. Blessings really have no absolute, fixed value in this world. A glass of water, sweetened with love, or a sunny, "Good morning," may go farther, in the end, than checks honored at the bank, or services paid out of the very costliest life of the giver.—James Buckham.